Vikings recap: 'Yol' 

How old is Ragnar Lothbrok? When we met him, he was a young man, father to fresh-faced children, dreaming wild ambitions about the life he was going to lead. Now he is older. Perhaps he is just old. “I cannot stop thinking about death,” he muses. “Death intrigues me.” He has lost a child. He has lost friends. “But my own death continues to elude me.”

Who can Ragnar speak to, now? His son Bjorn is far away, in the Interior. His first wife, Lagertha, is in Hedeby, an Earl abed with an Earl. His second wife, Aslaug, regards him as a nemesis. One of his best friends killed his other best friend. “I am constantly torn,” he says, “between killing myself or everyone around me.” His wife’s new slave, Yidu, listens to him. (She comes from far away — and hasn’t Ragnar always connected with outsiders, like Athelstan the Christian or Ecbert the intellectual?) “A king and a slave,” Ragnar says. “It is both our duties to serve others, whether we like it or not.”

King Aelle arrives in Wessex to share the table with his ally King Ecbert and the currently deposed Queen Kwenthrith. The problem of Mercia weighs heavy on Aelle. Shall the combined might of Northumbria and Wessex march to Mercia? And shall Kwenthrith once again be established as lord of that land? Aelle has concerns. Kwenthrith’s heir, Magnus, is the bastard son of Ragnar Lothbrok. Years have passed, but Aelle’s enmity toward the Northmen hasn’t dimmed.

They dine together, the English royals. Kings Aelle and Ecbert; Aethelwulf, Ecbert’s son; and Judith, daughter of Aelle, husband of Aethelwulf, mistress of Ecbert. Northumbria can sense the affairs all about him. Aethelwulf cozies up to Kwenthrith; Judith giggles with Ecbert. He takes his daughter aside and accuses her. “You are a bad wife and a bad mother,” he says. “The very worst example of womanhood.” But this is not the shy Judith he long ago married off. “You don’t own me, father,” says Judith. “Nor does any man own me. Though encumbered everywhere, I am 

Princess Gisla has prepared well for this divorce. The Cardinal has arrived. The papers of annulment are ready. But Rollo has a surprise for her. “I have learned your language!” he declares. “Princess Gisla, I beg you not to do this. I know my destiny is to be with you. And I swear that I, like you, am prepared to defend Paris to the death.”

A surprise: Duke Rollo actually paid attention during those language lessons! His efforts do not go unnoticed by his lady wife, who dismisses the Cardinal to enjoy the wine shops of Paris. “What is more important to you,” she asks her husband. “Our marriage, your appointment by the Emperor, or your Viking soul?” Rollo is confused; did he not slay his own warriors for the greater glory of Paris? But Gisla knows that that, too, is a very Viking thing to do. Rollo offers her his arm band. That is personal, he explains.

That, it seems, is good enough for Gisla. She arrives late to a Yuletide feast and demands that her husband follow her into the kitchen for important business. They make wild love, loud enough for everyone in attendance at the royal feast to hear them. Her father approves.

Bjorn prepares to return home, tattooing himself in memory for the long winter he has spent with his thoughts. He sets off wearing the pelt of the slain bear. A new threat awaits him: The berserker assassin sent by Kalf and Erlendur. The battle is brutal. The berserker slashes into Bjorn’s face and breaks Bjorn’s ax asunder.

But Bjorn gets the better of the warrior by stabbing fishhooks into his face and entrapping him wrapped around a tree. Bjorn takes a ring off the man’s finger. (We know the lord of that ring is Erlendur.) “Who sent you?” Bjorn Ironside asks his attacker. The man does not respond. Bjorn doesn’t ask a second time. He stabs the man deep in his stomach and lets his entrails fall on the ground, blood freezing as it leaves what used to be a human body. 

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